1930's Jack Johnson Signed Boxing Glove. While Jackie
Robinson endured no shortage of taunts and threats in his brave
segregation of Major League Baseball, never in American sporting
history has an athlete faced the level of racist vitriol leveled at
this first African-American Heavyweight Champion. Johnson's
dominance of the prize ring infuriated the white population, but
his romances with white women was gasoline on the fire of that
antipathy, resulting in the Champion's expatriation and subsequent
imprisonment upon his return to the States. Johnson contended, and
many historians agree, that his loss of the belt in 1915 to Jess
Willard was yet another symptom of the ugly and protracted campaign
against him, a dive for a cash reward and, more importantly,
passage back to the U.S.

A consequence of Johnson's lack of popularity in white America, and
his relatively early death by automobile accident in 1946, is a
challenging lack of autographs for the modern collectibles market.
Nowhere is this more evident than in the subgenre of signed boxing
gloves, of which only two or three are known to exist. Here we
present what is almost assuredly the finest of that rare breed, a
"Ken-Wel Brand" left hand glove neatly inscribed in 8/10 black
fountain pen ink, "Jack Johnson, Former Heavyweight Champion of
the World, U.S.A."

The glove itself has survived the passage of decades admirably, its
red leather remaining soft and supple without any of the cracking
or peeling endemic to other period examples. Use by Johnson himself
is uncertain but unlikely, considering the post-career inscription.
LOA from Craig Hamilton, J.O. Sports.